Monday, December 12, 2011

Turning the tide of indifference

Maia is already pulling herself up to stand. She adores Chloë's potty, partly because of the stickers on it and partly because it's convenient for hoisting herself up on. "Sit down!" I tell her. "It is too soon!" Crawling is trouble enough. She's already stuffed various overlooked paper products in her mouth, plus a small foam star that she luckily couldn't quite swallow. I think I need to devote more time to cleaning from now on.

We've determined that if I pump every night, and maybe also on those occasions that she ought to be hungry but is popping on and off and looking around at things instead, we may be able to avoid formula. We'll see how this goes. We've also determined--we think--why she's been so indifferent to food up until now. I offered her some grapes recently (well-chewed by myself, thank you) and she loved them, and Eric decided to offer her some banana from Chloë's banana when it looked like Chloë wasn't going to finish it, and she loved that too. She was also interested in applesauce--the real stuff. And she's loved her introduction to finger foods in the shape of puffs and Cheerios. Apparently she just doesn't like purees.

So we're going to work on giving her more "real" foods, and once we get through the stage 2s we've got--if we can--we'll move on to the stage 3s which have good texture in them. It feels awfully early to be moving on this, but she's getting close to eight months old, which is about the time to start introducing things like yogurt and pasta and bread products, teeth (or lack thereof) allowing. It's just that she hasn't been all that interested in food so far, and I haven't been as invested in getting her on it as I was with Chloë. But with the milk shortage, it's now become more important. Let's hear it for food!